


everything must start again anew

by frominfinitieswithin



Series: every kingdom [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Missing Scene, Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:20:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22728283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frominfinitieswithin/pseuds/frominfinitieswithin
Summary: Much had been left unspoken between them, when Jon had left for Dragonstone. They hadn’t spoken about how Jon had come to her chambers to say goodbye, hoping to part with her on good terms, but had ignited yet another argument.  Hadn’t spoken about how they’d gone back and forth for what felt like hours, air ripe with the tension that had been brewing between them for moons now.(Hadn’t spoken about how she’d ended up pressed against her desk, with his hands rucking up her skirts past her hips, his mouth pressing against her throat. How she’d begged him not to go, had sobbed it into his shoulder, as he’d driven into her, filling an emptiness that had long been threatening to consume her).or a post-Dragonstone missing scene/canon AU scene on the ramparts.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: every kingdom [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699615
Comments: 18
Kudos: 208





	everything must start again anew

Sansa hears Jon before she sees him, heavy footfalls echoing in the archway that opens out onto the ramparts of Winterfell. It seems that every argument, every quarrel, every open disagreement that they’ve had in front of the Northern lords, has led them here, in hopes of some sort of reconciliation. As if only the cold, Northern air could stamp out the white-hot anger that Jon always manages to inspire deep from within her.

(It’s not so much anger, she finds, as it is a trembling desperation for him to trust her. For him to believe that she too is valuable, that protecting the North is as deeply ingrained in her bones, as it is in his).

Now, as she watches Jorah Mormont lead Daenerys Targaryen across the courtyard, watches her direct foreign Unsullied and Dothraki hordes about the grounds of Sansa’s own castle with the surety of a seasoned commander, she wonders if reconciliation is enough to close the chasm that exists between her and Jon now.

(After all, the arrival of a Targaryen has always promised fire, not calmness. Promised blood, not peace).

“Sansa,” he breathes out in his familiar, Northern brogue, stepping out into the snow and towards her, the cloak that she made billowing behind him. 

Sansa closes her eyes against the sound, remembering how Jon had smelled like evergreen and wood and _winter_ when she’d wrapped her arms around him, upon his return from Dragonstone. Remembers how he’d breathed into the furs at her neck and held her just as steadfastly, like he hadn’t done in so many moons.

Remembers how her Tully blue eyes had locked with a curious, violet gaze over his shoulder.

She hadn’t missed the way Daenerys had brushed against Jon as he’d helped her dismount her horse, how she had looked up at him as he’d addressed the Northern houses. 

Sansa had looked at Loras Tyrell that way once. Had looked at Joffrey that way, before he’d given her reason to never look upon anyone like that again. 

“Did you lay with her?” Sansa asks, a familiar tightness making its way up her throat. She inhales deeply through her nostrils, pushing the feeling down, down, down. When he’d been gone, she’d sent him raven after raven, overwhelmed with how much his absence had rattled the foundation she’d built her _everything_ on, since she’d first felt his embrace back at Castle Black.

When they’d gone unanswered, that tightness had crawled its way up every time, determined to crumple the cool exterior that Sansa wore every day, the steel mask that Sansa needed to rule the North in Jon’s stead. 

_I’ve heard gossip that the Dragon Queen is quite beautiful._

Littlefinger’s blood had dried in the stones of the great hall long ago, but his poison had permanently seeped its way into Sansa’s marrow, had become an irrefutable voice to consider in the back of her head.

The memory burns behind Sansa’s eyelids, as she remembers this as the moment she had decided to take Littlefinger’s head, the moment he’d recognized what could bring her and the entire North to heel. The smirk he’d given her, in response to her incredulity of anything between Jon and Daenerys, the way he’d dangled the possibility of a marriage between the two in front of her, had been all too knowing. 

(Even in the end, even as she’d ordered her sister to slide Baelish’s own dagger across his throat, she hadn’t been able to read him, not in the way he’d been able to decipher her like his own personal language ).

Jon comes to an abrupt stop, halts dead in his tracks at the accusation. He looks down at his boots, ragged breaths visible in the harsh winter air, and closes his eyes, _those Stark grey eyes,_ just as she looks over to him. 

(He looks older than when he’d left her, she thinks, as her eyes rake over him, looks like someone who has the fate of a continent resting on his shoulders).

“Sansa, I-” Jon starts, voice barely a whisper audible over the wind, faltering out before he even really begins. 

The unspoken truth hangs between them, suspended in the air, much like the specks of snow that fall heavily around them. 

Much had been left unspoken between them, when Jon had left for Dragonstone. They hadn’t spoken about how Jon had come to her chambers to say goodbye, hoping to part with her on good terms, but had ignited yet another argument. Hadn’t spoken about how they’d gone back and forth for what felt like hours, air ripe with the tension that had been brewing between them for moons now. 

(Hadn’t spoken about how she’d ended up pressed against her desk, with his hands rucking up her skirts past her hips, his mouth pressing against her throat. How she’d begged him not to go, had sobbed it into his shoulder, as he’d driven into her, filling an emptiness that had long been threatening to consume her).

“Am I safe to presume that’s why you gave up the North then, why you bent the knee?” Sansa asks, eyes finally meeting his. She winces at the shakiness in her voice, at the shakiness of her hands, as she holds them clasped in front of her.

“That isn’t what happened, ” he replies, eyes insistent and pleading, as they study the planes and angles of her face. 

A laugh bubbles from her throat, but there’s little humor to be found in it. “Of course it is,” she bites out, and now that white-hot anger is fresh once again. “I begged you not to go, I told you the only way to keep the North safe was to _stay_ in the North, and now you come back with-”

“With allies, Sansa. With two more armies than we had before, with two dragons,” he retorts, cutting her off, chest heaving as he raises his voice at her, while he steps that much closer to her. Sansa watches him, as the snow catches in his hair, held back in its usual knot. She thinks of when they’d first taken back Winterfell and trust had been a fragile thing between them, Lord Baelish and the Vale tainting her already fraught relationship with Jon.

_We need to trust each other._

His lips had pressed against her forehead then, with his hand tangled in her copper hair, here where they stand on the ramparts. Here, where she’d named him a Stark and informed him of white ravens and a winter they’d spent their whole lives waiting for. 

(She thinks of after, when his eyes had flickered down to her lips, only for a moment, but for a moment nonetheless). 

Jon steps closer to her, extending his arm to grab at the crook of her elbow, but Sansa steps out of his reach, backing away. She feels bile rise in her throat, thinking of him touching her with those hands, the same hands he had held Daenerys Targaryen with. _Had they clenched in silvery-white hair when he’d spilled inside her,_ she wonders, _had they left bruises on Daenerys’s hips, like they had on her own, to be kissed by a remorseful Jon after their coupling?_

“Have you forgotten what her father did to this family?” she grits out sharply, gripping at the stone wall to steady herself, her other arm held across her stomach. She feels sick, suddenly, the feeling of betrayal settling in the pit of her chest, between her ribs. “Have you forgotten that he burned our uncle? That he burned our grandfather? And now because she’s given you one good fuck, now because you’ve bedded her, you’ve deemed yourself to forget that she won’t hesitate to do the same to the entire North—do the same to me!”

Jon moves suddenly, grabbing hold of Sansa’s free elbow and pushing her back against the cold stone, his other hand gripping at her waist. “Don’t,” he exhales, breathing heavily, with his mouth hovering desperately over hers. “Don’t ever say, don’t even think, that I would let her hurt you, I would never---I could never.”

“Just don’t,” he says, as he sighs into her mouth. His hands come up to cup her face and he closes the distance between their lips, his mouth slanting over hers. Sansa’s hands move to grip at his wrists, opening her mouth to the kiss, and sweeping her tongue across his bottom lip, fervently urging him to grant her entrance.

He groans into her mouth, and Sansa whimpers against the sound. She wants to consume him, wants to _drown_ in him. Has been waiting to feel him like this again for moons. Her hand travels to the hair that has escaped from its leather band, at the nape of his neck, and Jon’s hips buck unconsciously into her, pressing her harder against the wall.

His mouth moves to her throat, while his hands move to hike her skirts up and Sansa’s eyes flutter open, hit forcefully with another searing memory of Baelish, his presence always a never-ending constant between her and Jon it seems.

_You think he wants to marry her? An alliance would make sense._

That sour jealousy pulses through her ribcage once more and she’s pulling away from Jon, turning her head away, suddenly.

“Do you love her?” she asks, rearing her head back to be able to search his face, to look into his eyes. Eyes that had been studying her more and more closely, with each day, before he’d left for Dragonstone. That had gazed upon her less and less like a brother, and more like something else, like something darker, as they’d settled into ruling Winterfell. That had been watching the flex of her throat as she swallowed long before he’d actually gotten to taste the skin there.

Eyes that she’d memorized when he’d turned around on his horse to wave goodbye, taking a piece of her with him as he’d ridden off. 

He leans in once more, shaking his head and resting his forehead against hers, moving his hands back to her waist. They stand in silence, the noise of their sharp breaths and the low undercurrent of the Northern wind the only sounds around them. 

She closes her eyes and feels the flutter of his lashes against hers. Lets him hold her like this, despite still waiting for his answer.

(Waiting for Jon has become a second skin to her - a skin she wears as familiarly as the wolf pin that rests at her breast).

“I told you we needed allies. You told me to be smarter than Robb, to be smarter than Father,” he responds, voice low and honeyed. 

“No, I don’t love her,” he adds, whispering the promise against her skin.

No, he says, as he presses a chaste kiss to her temple, as he presses one to her cheekbones, to her eyes, her lips.

The hands at her waist squeeze slightly, pulling her closer, her hips aligned with Jon’s. She brings her own hands up to rest at his chest, fists curling into his jerkin. This kiss is different from the last — less urgent, less desperate — and Sansa moans at the tenderness of his touch. 

She catches his bottom lip into her mouth, and he practically gasps into hers, both of them breathless and trembling with need-

“Your Grace-“ Ser Davos starts, never finishing his initial thought, startling at the sight of them.

They don’t hear the sound of footsteps in time, extricating themselves from each other a fraction too late. Sansa pushes Jon away from her and steps away, wiping at her mouth as she does so.

Ser Davos stands in the archway, hands still clasped behind his back, as he looks between the two, mouth slightly ajar. 

It feels like moons pass before he speaks again, clearing his throat, as he says, “Your Grace, a raven came from the Wall for you.” He holds out the scroll and Sansa’s eyes follow, as Jon reaches for it.

Jon resolutely does not look at her, keeping his gaze trained on Davos and she feels that familiar shame burn at her throat, can taste the guilt she’d felt over what they’d done, shortly after Jon had left. 

“Perhaps we should take this to my solar,” Jon suggests to his Hand, still unable to meet her eyes, still breathing heavily, as he looks down at the scroll.

“No, I’ll go,” she decides, as the words leave her mouth, nodding curtly at Ser Davos and avoiding Jon’s eyes just as surely, walking towards the archway. Sansa leaves them on the ramparts, anger and betrayal and guilt festering still, as she makes her way to her chambers. There is work to be done, she thinks. She has ravens of her own to send, has ledgers to sign, has soldiers to house and mouths to feed. 

(She may wait for Jon but the dead will wait for no one, she realizes, suddenly and sharply, and all at once).

After all, as she had told him once before, where he stills stands now— 

Winter is here. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you to everyone who read and supported my first fic, it means the world to me!
> 
> title from everything by ben howard


End file.
